Alan Taylor 🎗️

Cycling, Running, Ultras, Hills, Independent Company member, Amateur Historian, MA Second World War.

[Alan Taylor 🎗️ @AlanTaylor168]

Be more like Calvin

[Al Murray 🇺🇦 @almurray]

TOMORROW

MARCHING FOR FINLEY
@FinleysTouch
@TheLondonIC1

[Alan Taylor 🎗️ @AlanTaylor168]

@BigBearF1 6 or 8 falls? can't quite make it out?

[Alan Taylor 🎗️ @AlanTaylor168]

@philmcraig @ChalkeFestival

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

This year the Home Office moved to stop expert sheep shearers from Australia and New Zealand coming to shear British sheep.

The people who keep the animals comfortable were declared surplus to requirements.

For over a decade, around 75 of the best shearers on earth have flown in each spring on a simple visa concession. In a few brutal weeks they take the wool off up to two million sheep.

A top shearer clears a ewe in two or three minutes. Hundreds a day. Calm hands, no panic in the animal. It is a global trade and a young body's game, and Britain has never grown enough of its own.

The official line? Fourteen years to train Britons, so the door is closing.

Here is what that tidy sentence ignores. A sheep must be shorn every year or she overheats, cannot move properly, and gets eaten alive by flies and maggots. Shearing on time is welfare, plain and simple, written into law and into the animal's own skin.

So a government that lectures farmers without pause about welfare has quietly made the most basic welfare task harder to carry out. After the outcry they allowed one "final" year. Then the experts are gone for good.

A sector already losing money on every fleece, already burning wool it cannot sell, now told it cannot even get the people in to take the wool off.

You could be forgiven for thinking somebody wants the British sheep gone.

[Larisa Brown @larisamlbrown]

The chief of the defence staff, Sir Richard Knighton, is not on resignation watch and is not going to resign, @thetimes has been told. He did however write a letter to Starmer on Wednesday raising his concern with the funding pledge, as first reported by @haynesdeborah

[Robert Lyman 🇺🇦 @robert_lyman]

Come on @DanJarvisMBE, do the decent thing…

[Alan Taylor 🎗️ @AlanTaylor168]

@soave1000 @April_1970s I've been saying for a while that destroy the UK's military capability is Starmer policy, seems I'm being proved correct.

[Alan Taylor 🎗️ @AlanTaylor168]

@CarlBovisNature Lovely

[Chatham House @ChathamHouse]

A year after the Strategic Defence Review was agreed, the UK government has decided not to fund its own review. In doing so, it is not merely failing to move forward — it is actively going backwards. https://t.co/38bWiYAgZd

[AW @AthleticsWeekly]

SCOTTISH RECORD

Megan Keith has set a Scottish 3000m record and gone third on the UK outdoor all-time list after running 8:28.35 in Oslo 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

The Brit has bettered Yvonne Murray's 8:29.02 from 1988 and is only behind Paula Radcliffe (8:22.20) and Laura Weightman (8:26.07) ⚡️

Laura Muir ran 8:26.41 indoors in Germany in 2017 🏃‍♀️

[Dominic Soave MSc @soave1000]

@chinnychick A damning letter

[Rt. Hon Ben Wallace @BenWallace70]

@AlistairCarns @JuliaHB1 Al was one of my very best commanders when i was in post. The MOD needs him. This Government needs his knowledge and leadership. If no.10 wont listen to him and Healey we really are screwed.

[Al Carns @AlistairCarns]

We owe those who serve the UK the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it's done. We are failing on both.

I’ve spent my whole time in government making that case. Number 10 will not listen, so I am resigning as Minister for the Armed Forces.

Letter to the PM below.🫡🫡🫡⬇️⬇️

[Patrick Christys @PatrickChristys]

Absolutely scathing about Keir Starmer from Al Carns, who has just resigned. Massively digs out Starmer for prosecuting British war heroes. Good stuff.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 BREAKING: Al Carns suggests he will resign as Armed Forces Minister if Keir Starmer doesn't increase defence spending

When asked if he thinks he will be sacked for not seeking No 10 permission for the interview, he says:

"What will happen, will happen"

[JamesFennell MBE @FennellJW]

Al Carns goes feral with an unauthorised interview. Sets out two conditions for staying on:
1./ funding the DIP
2./ changing the NI legacy act.

Lauds John Healey as a highly principled and hard working Defence Secretary.

BZ.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: Pamela Nash has resigned as a PPS in the Ministry of Defence

[sandieshoes 🇬🇧 @sandieshoes]

Astonishing interview with Al Carn on Sky’s Cathy Newman show.

He appeared on the show without notifying number 10 first.

Basically defying Starmer to sack him.

[Alan Taylor 🎗️ @AlanTaylor168]

@JohnSwinney Give me my money back!

[Roger Moorhouse 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱 @Roger_Moorhouse]

Reupping this for the afternoon shift...